Naval War College Review Volume 58 Article 11 Number 4 Autumn

2005 Surprise, Security, and the American Experience Jan van Tol

John Lewis Gaddis

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Recommended Citation van Tol, Jan and Gaddis, John Lewis (2005) "Surprise, Security, and the American Experience," Naval War College Review: Vol. 58 : No. 4 , Article 11. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol58/iss4/11

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van Tol and Gaddis: Surprise, Security, and the American Experience

BOOK REVIEWS

HOW COMFORTABLE WILL OUR DESCENDENTS BE WITH THE CHOICES WE’VE MADE TODAY?

Gaddis, John Lewis. Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004. 150pp. $18.95

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. U.S. history, American assumptions Lovell Professor of History at Yale Uni- about national security were shattered versity and one of the preeminent his- by surprise attack, and each time U.S. torians of American, particularly Cold grand strategy profoundly changed as a War, security policy. Surprise, Security, result. and the American Experience is based on After the British attack on Washington, a series of lectures given by the author D.C., in 1814, John Quincy Adams as in 2002 addressing the implications for secretary of state articulated three prin- American security after the 11 Septem- ciples to secure the American homeland ber attacks. It is a succinct and master- against external attack: preemption, ful statement of the central national unilateralism, and hegemony. The security dilemma that presently faces us. Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming Ameri- For many, especially critics of the cur- can hegemony in the Western Hemi- rent administration, President Bush’s sphere, was declared unilaterally and post-9/11 policies in response to the preemptively in reaction to the Spanish threat presented by militant Islamism empire’s collapse in Latin America represent a radical and scary departure (though in practice it was enforced by from historical U.S. policy. Many puta- British naval supremacy, not American tively are aghast at the introduction of power). preemptive/preventive war into the Na- For over a century, the United States tional Security Strategy adopted in Sep- expanded its territory and influence tember 2002 and the apparent shift to a through force majeure exercised against harsh hegemonic unilateralism. “failing states,” another phenomenon by Gaddis argues that far from being a no means new in our times. Florida was radical departure, the Bush administra- ceded by Spain under pressure in 1810, tion’s response to the attacks represents Texas and the Southwest were taken from considerable continuity with American a chaotic Mexico in the mid-nineteenth historical tradition. Twice before in century, overseas Spanish possessions

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were seized in 1898 after an ostensible To keep allies with widely disparate war “terrorist” attack on USS Maine, and aims together, FDR sought to “embed myriad lesser interventions took place in conflicting unilateral priorities within a Latin America and the Caribbean. Fear cooperative multilateral framework.... of multilateral entanglement peaked If the present war could provide the in- with insistence on being an “associated centive to build structures and proce- power” during World War I, rejection dures that would prevent new [wars], of the League of Nations, and pre– then all would benefit.” Absent this, World War II isolationism. America re- “there was sure to be something worse, mained content with hegemony in the whether in the form of a less than deci- Western Hemisphere and unilateralism sive victory against Germany and Japan, in dealings with other nations and in- or a postwar economic collapse, or even ternational organizations; preemption of a replay of the post–World War I re- the dictators in the 1930s, always in- treat by the United States back into the feasible domestically, would have been unilateralism of the nineteenth century impossible given European democracies’ that had...contributed to the coming appeasement policies. of World War II. The result was de Transportation revolutions from the facto American hegemony, but in con- late nineteenth century onward dimin- trast to anything John Quincy Adams ished the value of geographical separa- could ever have imagined, it was to arise tion that underpinned this strategy, as by consent.” spectacularly proven by the Japanese at- Gaddis argues that this was the radical tack on Pearl Harbor in December departure in U.S. security policy, not 1941. Obliged by necessity—the United what has happened since 11 September. States had insufficient power to defeat Since World War II, the underlying both Germany and Japan in a reason- principle vis-à-vis other nations was able amount of time and at an accept- that “there should always be something able cost—to depart radically from worse than the prospect of American unilateralism, President Franklin D. domination,” a condition easy to main- Roosevelt moved quickly to establish a tain during the Cold War standoff with “Grand Alliance” with Britain and the the Soviet Union. This ensured an Soviet Union. “asymmetry of legitimacy” between the By the end of World War II, America United States and the Soviet Union that “was able to move in a remarkably “did much to determine how the Cold short period of time from a strategy War was fought and who would ulti- that had limited itself to controlling the mately win it.” Preemption as policy western hemisphere to one aimed at routinely was rejected on the basis that, winning a global war and managing the given the lessons of the bloody world peace that would follow. Equally signif- wars, an impossibly high moral ante icant is the fact that FDR pulled off this was needed to justify starting a war and expanded hegemony by scrapping incurring the inevitable costs for an un- rather than embracing the two other known benefit, even in the face of a key components of Adams’ strategy, clear and present danger. unilateralism and preemption.” But what if there is no longer “some- thing worse”? One curious question

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van Tol and Gaddis: Surprise, Security, and the American Experience BOOK REVIEWS 145

post–Cold War is why there have been eagerly await the midnight knock of the no serious efforts among other nations secret police.” Lastly, the strategy and to build countervailing groupings to subsequent policy statements argue that “balance” near-hegemonic U.S. global terrorism (that we care about) is power, French urgings notwithstand- spawned largely by the lack of represen- ing. “The reason, very likely, was the tative institutions in tyrannical regimes; habit of self-restraint Americans had thus “terrorism—and by implication developed—because they had had to— the authoritarianism that breeds it— during the Cold War, a habit they did must become as obsolete as slavery, pi- not entirely relinquish after it ended.” racy, or genocide” through the spread The shocking and lethal nature of the of democracy. Gaddis finds much to re- 9/11 attacks, coupled with the fact that spect in this strategy, particularly its in- they had been executed by a mere tellectual coherence. However, he notes group of zealots, resulted in a rapid, glaring flaws in its execution. The radical change in U.S. national security “most obvious failure has to do with strategy. Key Cold War assumptions no the relationship between preemption, longer applied. The post–Cold War in- hegemony, and consent.” The run-up to ternational environment was not be- and aftermath of the Iraqi war have nign; terrorists were neither deterrable raised doubts about the willingness of nor containable like states but poten- much of the world to consent to Ameri- tially had equivalent lethality; the inter- can hegemony if used to preempt in the national state system had declining absence of compellingly clear and pres- authority; and there was no longer a ent danger, doubts aggravated by the security environment in which all the fact that the Bush administration “has players knew and respected the rules. never deployed language with anything like the care it has taken in deploying its The 2002 National Security Strategy military capabilities.” It is this lack of avers that the United States will “iden- multilateral “consent”—and the sup- tify and eliminate terrorists wherever posed departure from widely accepted they are, together with the regimes that historical norms—that has animated sustain them.” Though multilateral ac- much of the opposition to current poli- tion is preferred (“The United States cies both at home and abroad. will constantly strive to enlist the sup- port of the international community”), This poses a problem that will not soon unilateral preemption may be necessary disappear. As Gaddis notes, “the means (“We cannot let our enemies strike we choose in this post-September 11th first.”). The United States will maintain environment could wind up undermin- de facto hegemonic power sufficient “to ing the ends we seek. It is also possible, dissuade potential adversaries from though, that the ends we seek, given the pursuing a military build-up in hopes new threats we face, can be achieved of surpassing, or equaling, the power of only by means different from those that the United States.” The strategy seeks to won World War II and the Cold War. make such implicit hegemonic power This much at least is clear: the dilemma palatable by linking it to such universal is a difficult one, and its resolution will principles as “No people on earth yearn largely determine the relationship to be oppressed, aspire to servitude, or

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between surprise, security, and the American experience in the 21st century.” Burke, Jason. Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Ter- Gaddis closes with a poignant anecdote. ror. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003. 304pp. $24.95 One of his Yale undergraduates “asked As the United States enters its fifth year in the dark and fearful days that fol- in the war on terrorism, too little is lowed September 11th, ‘Would it be OK known about al-Qa‘ida. Though several now for us to be patriotic?’” to which top al-Qa‘ida operatives, like Khalid he responds, “Yes, I think it would.” This Shaikh Mohammed, are now in cus- is a commentary both on the smug tody, and detainee reporting from self-indulgence of many elites during Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Airbase, and America’s post–Cold War “vacation other locations provides a historical from history” and on the uncomfort- snapshot of the pre-9/11 organization able “disconnection in our thinking be- led by Usama Bin Laden, the United tween the security to which we’ve States still lacks the vocabulary to un- become accustomed and the means by derstand how and why terrorism which we obtained it.” It is intellectu- threatens. This is partly due to the im- ally fashionable in many venues today pact of global counterterrorist opera- to condemn the sometimes morally am- tions (the Congressional Research biguous policies that have nonetheless Services notes that three thousand sus- brought us the national security we his- pected al-Qa‘ida members have been torically have taken for granted. But as detained by about ninety countries), Gaddis notes: “The better approach, I conflicting strategies within Bin Laden’s think, is to acknowledge the moral am- organization (global legion of militants biguity of our history. Like most other or global inspiration), and the diversity nations, we got to where we are by of groups that compose contemporary means that we cannot today, in their depictions of al-Qa‘ida (the Egyptian entirety, comfortably endorse. Comfort al-Jihad, the Indonesian Jemaah alone, however, cannot be the criterion Islamiyah, or the Kashmiri Haarakat by which a nation shapes its strategy ul-Mujahidin, to name three of the and secures its safety. The means of many disparate nationalist groups confronting danger do not disqualify lumped together with al-Qa‘ida). themselves from consideration solely on the basis of the uneasiness they pro- Jason Burke, a chief reporter for the duce. Before we too quickly condemn London Observer who spent about four how our ancestors dealt with such years in Pakistan and Afghanistan, ar- problems, therefore, we might well ask gues that al-Qa‘ida (Arabic for “the ourselves two questions: What would base of operation” or “foundation”) is we have done if we had been in their an overused term and mischaracterizes place then? And, even scarier, how the nature of international terrorism. In comfortable will our descendants be contrast to the pre-9/11 view that Bin with the choices we make today?” Laden is al-Qa‘ida, or the post–Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (Afghanistan) JAN VAN TOL view that al-Qa‘ida is a global coalition Captain, U.S. Navy of factions, Burke argues it is less an or- ganization than an ideology. “Osama

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